Being prepared resides alongside the unknown. I believe in both. Rehearse your every note & word & even movement if you can. Dedicate yourself to the vision. Then let go into the living event in which the worst that can happen is not approaching that moment, allowing it to pass away from fear. Even if the anxiety is understandable, for me, regret is worse. I don’t want to know I said no to making art and allowing it to converse, to resonate, in the world.

I think singing (and reciting) acapella is so important as it gets to the core of what it is to be an artist in the world. We are raw, vulnerable, imperfect and we take risks. That, to me, is beautiful.

With my poem-song band, The Lyrical Outlaws, I have been transforming poems into songs and thus, beginning to explore how this process works, what the difference is between a lyric and lyrics, what knowledge I bring to bear on this path of musical translation.

1/Songs have the language of music added to them, which is why lyrics must be simpler than poems; they have to share a sonic space.

2/A poet must be an ear musician; a lyricist a musical body part.

3/Translating poems into songs is like stripping lexical flesh down to its starker spine, so the words may become divining rods at the core of melodies.